Food-based supplement danger?

Will food-based calcium supplements give me kidney stones? Let's talk about that. Welcome back to the Kidney Stone Diet Podcast, the show about reducing your kidney stone risk and living your best life.

I'm your host and fellow student, Jeff Sarris.

And I'm Nurse Jill.

All righty, so we are back at it today. And we have a listener question. If you have a question, go to call.show/kidneystonediet or just click the link in the description of this video, and you can, one click leave us a message and we will feature you in the future.

So, let's jump right over to Jennifer's question.

Hey, Jill. It's Jen here. And, similar to Riva's question about calcium, I wanted to find out if, food-based calcium supplements are as bad as every other calcium supplement out there and, if they also cause harm to the kidneys and the arteries.

All right, thanks very much. Like if you looked at a piece of Wonder Bread, it has a heck of a lot of calcium in it, believe it or not. Not that you're buying Wonder Bread, lovey, Jeff.

I know you're not. But I'm just saying people do, and they're like they turn it around, they look at the label, they're like, "Holy moly, look at all this calcium it's got in here." So Jen is asking calcium that has been put into food for various reasons, could be cereal, could be English muffins, could be Wonder Bread.

There's other reasons they may be putting the calcium in there. They're not necessarily thinking about bone health. It could be used for other things.

But let's just go with this and hopefully Jen, when she sees the video, will comment, "Yes, old lady," or "No, old lady, that's not what I meant," and we can clarify it in the community. Go ahead.

You know, I might actually… So, food-based calcium supplements specifically might more mean red algae, Dairy Ease, I guess dairy.

That's what I was thinking, yeah. The algae things.

Yeah, so supplements, 'cause I see these calcium chews that are food-based, no added sugar. Again, this isn't an endorsement of calcium chews or whatever they are, but…

Oh god, no. Believe me, it is not.

Yeah. But that could actually… Like, actually looking at it, I think that's what it is.

It would be supplements that come from food, rather than synthetic, probably.

Right. So like the algae and all these things. There's AlgaeCal, that's a calcium supplement, right.

So, let me just cover the whole darn thing, right? So, because the answer's going to be, well, specifically for like say the supplement has been made from food, like algae, and then they stick that in a capsule. Algae has some calcium in it, we're sticking it in a capsule.

That would not be advised for kidney stone formers. That would be no, okay? So, there's there's reasons why.

When we take something in a pill form, it's just it's very concentrated, we're getting it all at once. Than if it's suspended, like, in a liquid, it's going to be it's just going to be digested along with food, by the way, better than just a big bolus in a pill. And typically these pills have 500, 600 milligrams of calcium in it.

It's just a lot at once. So, now, people are not going to be happy that I'm going to say this because they're going to say, "But Jill, you always say no pills." The science says no pills, no calcium pills. There's reasons specifically why.

Number one, people tend to just take the pills like they're eating Pez candy, and they're not taking calcium pills with food, which is what they need to do. A lot of those pills are too high. For example, "Well, Jill, I was taking Tums because I always had GERD.

And by the way, I'm getting 750 milligrams of calcium in one Tum. And by the way, it's sherbet flavored. It's delicious, yum." So it's just too much calcium.

The bones are not going to take all that calcium at once. There's going to be a lot thrown into the urine. And if you don't pee a lot, then you have too much calcium in the urine, and that can increase your stone risk.

So we don't want that. But why people may get mad—I can think of a few people come to mind—"Jill, why are you saying that?" Because we have to be really clear. There are people who have—they've just had a parathyroid surgery.

These are some glands in your neck that control calcium. Some people have had to have those taken out, and their doctor has now told them, "We're trying to control your calcium. Your body ain't making it right now because it's missing two parathyroid glands.

So we're going to give you calcium supplements." If that patient went on my Facebook page and said—at Kidney Stone Diet on Facebook, it's a private group—and said, "Look, my doctor has me on calcium supplements and I've been told all over the place, 'Don't take no pill, it causes stones.'" But the patient's also not disclosing her doctor said to take it because she just had a parathyroid surgery.

That's a different story. Another example: on the Facebook page, somebody writes me, "Jill, I'm petrified. I'm on calcium supplements.

I've had a bariatric surgery. My doctor said I have to take it. I'm not absorbing enough calcium from my food." That person needs to take that pill.

So it's sometimes it's not a perfect solution, but we can work around it for those specific patients who cannot get calcium through food, chewing food, not pill food, not algae supplements, because naturally, when we eat food, all of our nutrients are absorbed so much better through the eating process. They just are. I would rather get my vitamin D from the sun, but there's not enough of it in Chicago to make my levels happy.

So I do have to take a pill, okay? So sometimes we still have to take a pill, even though it's not the best thing for a certain disease. So, want to be very clear here.

So when you take a little pill of hundreds of milligrams of calcium, the body, it's just too much at once, especially if you're not taking with food. But even if you are taking it with food, if you're taking like orange juice and it's been supplemented with calcium, you shake that up, you eat take it with food, of course, and it's just a different it's just digested differently than one pill.

It just is, okay? It's not this just bolus meaning a big hit. The liquid disperses the calcium.

So it's it's different. So you get even distribute distribution, distribution as opposed to the pill, all right? So that's really important.

But I don't say this enough, and I do say this to private patients, of course, and I do say it in my email, but pills, calcium supplements may and should be used if your doctor tells you because you have a malabsorption issue, you have bariatric surgery, you've had you're on a GLP-1 and you're not absorbing things, you have a bowel disease and you have a lot of diarrhea, you have again, parathyroid surgery and until those couple parathyroids start regulating—and the parathyroid, like I said, it controls calcium.

If you're not, if you don't have enough in your system, it will kick up. If you have too much in your system, it will lower. So until those parathyroids get regulated better after the surgery, what's left of them, then calcium may be used for a while, and it's okay.

Sometimes supplements are needed and it's going to be prioritized over the kidney stone risk. Getting your calcium from food, whether it's plant milks or dairy, is what is advisable. I get mine through lactose-free dairy.

That works for me. If you do not do dairy, it's absolutely fine. You have the plant milks, and there's a great article at kidneystonediet.com.

If you just Google kidneystonediet.com kidneystonediet Jill fortified plant milk, you'll come right up to the acceptable plant milks. So you can do that. So that's it for this one, Jeff, I think.

Do you have any questions on it?

No, I think that's perfect. So, yeah, thank you, Jennifer, for your call.

I love that she asked it.

Well, yeah, it's perfect. Well, there's all the nuance to everything that's important to touch on throughout this. That's why we have so many—we're almost at 300 episodes of this show!

So, there's so much always to talk about. If you're out there with a question, you can go to call.show/kidneystonediet or just click the link in the description of this video. And, also, go to kidneystonediet.com to enter email to sign up for Jill's free weekly newsletter that keeps you on track and helps you prevent future stones.

So with that, I think we'll wrap, and we'll see you next week.

Thank you, Jen. Appreciate it.